“A patent application, reported by AppleInsider, filed by Apple in June 2011 for an “On-demand generation of electricity from stored wind energy” tells us that the company is working on a wind turbine that converts rotational energy from turbine blades into heat, which is then stored and used to generate electricity when necessary,” Ariel Schwartz writes for Co.Exist. “Today’s turbines often turn kinetic energy from turbine blade rotation directly into mechanical energy or electricity.”

“If it’s efficient and cheap enough, Apple’s turbine system could solve a piece of the renewable energy puzzle that has prevented intermittent sources like solar power and wind from being used more widely: storage–in this case, heat that’s stored in fluid,” Schwartz writes. “[Apple is] building a giant solar farm in North Carolina that will power an adjacent data center, which also uses fuel cells for power. In recent years, Apple also filed patents for hydrogen fuel cell designs that could power its line of gadgets. Just like with consumer electronics, Apple isn’t content, it seems, to just use the status quo technology. It has to invent its own.”